Hi! I can use some help and this is pretty bizarre. I decided some time back to create a dual boot on my pc, which runs Windows XP Media Center. I opted for an UBUNTU distribution and, to avoid any imagined conflicts, I installed UBUNTU on a separate external hard drive, a MAXTOR 2 F040L0 (this hard drive actually came from an older GATEWAY pc, whereby I removed it’s internal HD and converted it to a USB device).
Booting up my pc certainly gives me the option of selecting WINDOWS XP or UBUNTU but I ALWAYS have to leave the external MAXTOR drive on.
If this external drive is shut off, I can not boot into WINDOWS, I get something that says…‘GRUB error’
I also can not uninstall UBUNTU as this external drive does NOT show up as a separate drive under MY COMPUTER.
The reason why I am wanting to uninstall UBUNTU is due to the above scenario. Also, the UBUNTU distro I have apparently is lacking any means for WIRELESS hookup. Many thanks for any help,
Maxxnme:?
IMHO it is not to bizarre. GRUB will try to read its menu.lst from your UBUNTU disk which is not there.
This being a SUSE and not an UBUNTU forum, I can assure you that GRUB will behave the same on SUSE lol!
The very fact that your second disk is outside of the PC box does not mean that it it can be detached and attached at will in all software situations. The same laws aply as for disks that happen to be inside the hard case of the system.
Put a small Linux /boot partition on the first drive, so it’s always there when you switch the computer on. This will involve partitioning the windows drive, which you might not like
Re-install the windows bootloader and change to a multiboot that uses the windows bootloader rather than the Linux bootloader. The windows bootloader lives on drive 1, so it’s always there.
Thank you for the feedback and education. According to the 2nd method, based on the link you provided, I can get to boot.ini
My question is, based on the following info (as described on the link):
That will open the file boot.ini for editing. Typically that file looks much like this example:
[boot loader]
timeout=15
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS=“Windows XP” /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
Add this line as a last line:
c:\suse.bin=“openSUSE”
Where it says: 'add this last line:
C:\suse.bin=“openSUSE”
Even though I have UBUNTU in there, will adding SUSE make a difference?
Many thanks,
Maxxnme
You can put any message you like, even “Viva Swerdna”, inside the quotes. It’s just a message that is then displayed as a menu item in the windows bootloader menu. It’s the file suse.bin that actually does the real work.